Human rights and political change in Eastern Europe

pp. 1-25

in: Rudolf L. Tőkés (ed), Opposition in Eastern Europe, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1979

Abstract

Since the crushing of the Czechoslovak reform movement in 1968 and, with greater intensity and on a broader scale, since the signing of the Helsinki Final Act in 1975, a growing number of East Europeans have stood up for their right to individual self-determination and have demanded that the regimes honour constitutional guarantees of civil rights and to deliver on promises of a better life under socialism.¹